September 17, 2020 • 36 mins
Before the rise of household automation, British elites struggled to find the perfect method for cooking meat. They preferred it roasted, slowly, turning continually on a spit to evenly distribute heat. Yet this backbreaking labor proved too difficult for even the most spry peasant child, and so they turned to an innovative (if cruel) alternative: Breeding dogs specifically to turn meat spits. These 'Turnspit Dogs' occupied one of the lowest rungs in the hierarchy of any noble kitchen, living brutal lives of endless toil on what were essentially hamster wheels. Listen in to learn the tragic tale of the 'Turnspit Dog.'
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so
much for tuning in. I Uh, I gotta say, I
just love the cartoonish nature of this one. I'm Ben,
get that out of the way. And I love cartoons, Ben,
I love cartoons too, And I also love the word cartoonish.
And I really learned it from you, and I think
a lot of listeners have. They'll drop that word like
(00:50):
it's a nod to Ben Bolan. That's Ben Boland speak.
I love it you basically, Like it's not like you
own the word, but it's certainly you've got the Ben
Bowling trademark of cartoonish downpat for sure. Ben. You know
what I love delicious roasted meats, you know, especially on
a hand turned spit over an open flame, like like, yeah,
(01:14):
you ever see that massive cone of meat at the
euro Place, you know, or they shave it off the side.
It really isn't the same unless it's it's it's got
to be in motion, dude, That meat's gotta move, my friend.
That's where the flavor comes from. Everybody knows that, right, Yeah. Yeah,
It's just like at the Brazilian steakhouses. You remember those,
I am no, yeah, like Fogo to chow. What do
(01:35):
they call them gauchos or they like you have the
little car that you flip over when you meat, and
they bring you the meat and it's on a giant
skewer that they literally take off of these racks that
are like over these open flames and they're just glistening
with deliciousness and juices. Sorry if we're triggering any vegetarians
out there right now, but sorry, this is an episode
(01:56):
about rotating meat, uh, and hedonism and a weird ways
throughout history that that meat has been allowed to move.
That's true, that's true. This is one of those episodes
that's gonna leave the three of us null, myself and
our super producer, Casey Pegrum, incredibly hungry, ravenous famished afterwards. Uh,
(02:19):
you're right. The it has been scientifically proven by us,
with zero studies or experiments or oversight of any kind
or oversight of any kind, that the motion of meat
is what provides the succulents, the flavor, all all the
all the juicy goodness. It's there's a great uh, there's
(02:41):
great article and the vintage news That gets us into
this story where they talk about how in the Cartoon
and the Flintstones, one of the running gags was to
have animals taking the place of a of a machine, right,
household appliance of some kind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like you know,
the dishwasher was an octopus or there was I keep
(03:06):
remembering there was a bird right who would do something
and then there would be a weird you know, sound
cue and the bird would be like, that's it was
it like the faucet or something. There's definitely like a
pig as the garbage disposal. I definitely remember that and
it and it just lives under the sink, and I
guess the beauty there is like you're feeding the pig
(03:27):
with your garbage, so you don't really But then wouldn't
it just like poop everywhere? Though it seems like it
would be way more mess creating than it would be eliminating.
What do you think, Casey? I think you just you
take that and you do composting and then it's all
very sustainable exactly basically on the case. But it turns
out that wasn't so far fetched, Uh, the operative word
(03:50):
here being fetched. I like that that was good. It
turns out that once upon a time, once upon a
medieval time, there we go p well, did use animals
to do some of the same things that machines do today.
In the sixteenth century, there was a breed of dog
(04:11):
whose entire existence was to assist humans in cooking meat,
and it was known by the phrase the turnspit dog. Off. Mike,
I was talking with you guys about this over the weekend,
and when I first saw the phrase turnspit dog for
(04:32):
diving into the research, I thought they were dogs made
to be eaten, and I felt terrible, and I was
wondering whether we should skip this episode. But luckily it's not.
Had a different job no, uh, And I sort of
jumped the shark a little bit when I said, once
upon a medieval time, so we'll backchrack ever so slightly too.
Before these dogs were employed, uh, back in the medieval times. Um,
(04:56):
you know, in in Britain, they would essentially just scoff
at the notion of roasting meat in an oven. There's
a book called Amazing Dogs, A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities
by Jan Bondison, and it talks about the evolution of
this uh kind of dogg e tech that led to
uh the spit dog um. Initially, though in the fifteenth century,
(05:18):
it was it was it was hard work to rotate
this spit by hand. So if you were a chef
or you you know, you got a lot of other
things on your plate literally, uh and figuratively, and so
you're running around doing stuff. You don't have time to
turn the spit with a crank by hand. So you know,
in these royal households um and you know, moneyed kind
(05:38):
of gentry situations, Uh, you absolutely had to have your
roasted spit meat. And in order to do that, you
had to actually have someone whose entire job it was
to rotate the meat. If you didn't have it rotating
at a steady pace, you know, you would run the
(06:00):
risk of it not being cooked evenly, or being overcooked
or or undercooked or whatever. So you had to have
somebody that was like rotating it by hand. And initially, uh,
it was children that did it. And and this is
kind of disturbing, actually apparently oftentimes it was such hot, sweaty,
backbreaking work that the children would do this job in
(06:24):
the nude, Yeah, because oftentimes if they were wearing their
clothes they would get so hot that they could faint.
And we can't have these these spit children fainting because
what what will happen to our meats? They will stop
rotating and that's not gonna fly. So, you know, off
with the clothes, young spit child. This is disturbing stuff.
(06:45):
Apparently they weren't even allowed to take breaks and there
are reports of them having to urinate in the fireplaces.
Uh in Henry, the eighth home of Hampton Court. Um,
it's it's pretty dark. They were called spit jack's and
they were they would maybe get a wet bail of hay.
That was about what they had in terms of workers rights.
(07:07):
And this could be seen as you know, like a
funny site gag in a comedy film. But this was
a very real and very torturous existence. And this was
also a luxury. It wasn't like if you were in
the average family in England at the time. It's not
(07:30):
like your parents would make you and your siblings draw
straws to see who has to turn the meat all night. Uh.
This is something that you would see more like taverns
or the homes of aristocracy. But by the fifteen hundreds
there was something that was kind of like a the
medieval version of outsourcing. Because these kids, they weren't just
(07:56):
living a rough life, they were also frankly often fainting
just from heat exhaustion, and they get these horrific blisters
on their hands, which means even when they weren't fainting,
it was very difficult for them to work. So picture
King Henry the eighth, like a person in an infomercial,
(08:18):
just dropping glasses and stuff, and he's going, there's got
to be a better way. Yeah, this filthy nude street urchins,
open sores are getting all over my meat. That's a
disgusting image. And I apologize, folks, but it's true. I mean,
this was really untenable. And I imagine they had to
have them kind of like off camera, you know what
I mean, like somehow like pay no attention to the
(08:41):
the the young lad behind the curtain, turning the meat
spit um. So yeah, there there did have to be
another way. Uh. And and it turns out that other
way was what we uh know now um as a
turnspit dog um, which in the sixteenth century really became
the way. Uh. And to to get this done and
(09:04):
to to get the kids you know, let's let let's
give them some of the let's you know, let's put
them back in the stables, you know, give them some
other kind of dehumanizing and dangerous work. Um. But you
know we're gonna we're gonna relegate spit turning to these
dogs a particular breed of dog in fact, right, that's right.
You can see a depiction of this in some old drawings. Uh,
(09:25):
we found one that was I think through amusing planet.
But let me just describe this too. So there's there's
a bench and it's clearly a tavern kind of restaurant
to people are sitting there, families having food and drinks.
And there's someone who works at the tavern watching the
(09:45):
fire where a leg of what appears to be you know,
lamb or beef is slowly turning on the spit and
it's attached through this uh system of pulleys to a
hamster wheel kind of hanging a wooden wheel hanging from
a roof beam. And there's a tiny dog just forrest
(10:06):
gump level, running his heart out in the wheel to
turn the meat. Uh. There is also a cat who
is on the you can see at the bottom who's
just sort of staring in idle curiosity at the dog.
I was thinking maybe the cat was there to like,
you know, like as like a stick and carrot kind
of approach. You know, like the cat is what the
(10:28):
dog is constantly running after in place, you know, on
this little hamster wheel. Because I do, I do wonder
like I mean, that requires some training, you know, I
would think a dog eventually would get bored of just
running around on a wheel. Uh. They would probably be
some abusive tactics that would go into making sure these
dogs never stopped right, Yeah, Or maybe they're just very
(10:49):
energetic naturally. The way they're described reminds me a little
bit of doctions of wiener dogs because they've got short
legs that got a long body drooping ears. Uh. The
zoologist Carl Linnaeus called the Canus revertigious dizzy dog dizzy
(11:09):
doug because they were always running around in circles. So
let's talk a little bit about this apparatus. Uh, that
had to be like custom design like for this purpose,
you know, because the kids were essentially turning a chain
or like pulling a lever kind of situation. Obviously, dogs
(11:29):
don't have hands, um, so they had to kind of
manufacture something that would allow the dog to use its
like locomotion to constantly turn this spit. Uh. So basically
it was a hollow wheel just like a hamster wheel
UM with an axle connected to it, and that would
turn the chain or strings that was attached to the
(11:50):
spit and keep it rotating um at a steady pace. UM.
As the dog would run just like a hamster wheel,
the spit would turn and they were able to um
locate the device away from the actual spit to keep
the dogs from from getting too hot, which you gotta
wonder why they didn't figure that out for the kids.
(12:12):
Maybe that would have kept them from, you know, passing
out constantly. It seems like they gave the dogs a
lot more attention and care than they did these children. Yeah. Yeah,
and maybe if being optimistic, I could say that it's
a lesson learned from their first time out the gate
with this abusive practice. But maybe, like many people, they
(12:35):
just liked dogs more than they liked humans, sort of
like the Nazis and horses, right right, Like the Nazis
and horses, the dogs had a number of uses, but
they also had almost like workers rights. I'm not sure
how to say it. They had Sundays off and and
they also you know, when they were done with kitchen duty, Uh,
(12:59):
they were given another job. They were trained to sit
on their owner's feet to keep them warm in manner
houses and in castles which are famously drafty. I'm sorry,
I'm not trying to harp on this too much, but
it's crazy. They gave the dogs sundays off and the
children worked around the clock year round. I mean, I
(13:21):
aid only assume it wasn't something that we came across
of like what days did the kids get off? It
didn't seem like they did. Uh. Really bizarre and interesting. Um,
so let's talk a little bit more about the actual breed.
We talked about a name that was given to what
has it been canus vertigious dizzy dogous dog? Yeah exactly. Uh.
(13:44):
This was you know, much like docs sins with their
short legs and and long kind of slender bodies. I
believe we're bred for a particular type of hunting. Initially
in Germany, that's true. The British dog breeders were looking
for specific qualifications. Had to be dogs was small enough
(14:04):
to fit in a wheel. Irish wolfhound wouldn't fit the bill,
you know. Uh, they had to be super strong, they
had to be energetic, and they couldn't be dummies because
you had to be able to train them to do
some specific things. And they definitely didn't want them to
talk back like those pesky animal appliances in the flint stumps,
or have hands like those pesky children. So according to
(14:27):
the Kennel Club in London, Uh, the first mention of
them occurs in fifteen seventy six in the first book
on dogs ever written. This is the book English Dogs
by John Kiss. He said that they so diligently looked
to their business that no drudge nor Scullion can do
the feat more cunningly, Drudge and Scullion being names for
(14:51):
kitchen staff at the time. Uh. And did we say
it's other Latin name yet? Oh? You the vernapeture cur?
What's that mean? Uh? It's just essentially like kitchen dog
or cooking dog, if I'm not mistaken. I love the
idea of a cur that's sort of a term of abuse,
an old timey one like you cur, you villainous cur,
(15:12):
which I guess is a dog. I didn't really realize
that until looking into the research for this episode. Um,
but yeah, I mean it is a good example. Like
I was talking about Dockson's being bred specifically for hunting.
It was for hunting specific types of small game like badgers,
which I thought would uh would do it for you ben,
and and other types of rodents and smaller things. They
(15:32):
wanted to be lowered to the ground so they could,
like wheat, wiggle into some of the smaller spaces that
those creatures would go. Um, and it's the spit dog,
according to this book of the English Dogs by John Caius,
was a really good example of breeding an animal for
a specific purpose. And to be honest, they have a
(15:55):
little bit of a spotty history. We've been being very
nice to the kitchen staff. Uh. These dogs were well
known in contemporary society. Uh, people wrote about them. Shakespeare
has a dog mentioned in the Comedy of Errors. And
the hard truth of it is that these dogs did
(16:17):
not have a good life, right Like, yes, they didn't
work on Sundays, but the kitchen staff usually got Sundays off. Yes,
they got to hang out with their owner and keep
their feet warm. And that's you know, it gives gives
us all the all the cute fuzzy feels. But we
have to remember that these were not ornamental pets. These
(16:37):
were dogs with a function and they were treated pretty roughly. Yeah.
And it wasn't until um, you know, animal cruelty groups
like the A s p c A or the American
Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals UH started kind
of taking notice of of, you know, animal rights. The
(17:00):
idea of animal rights was not a thing like it
was really like animals were here for us and we
would do with them as as we as we pleased. Um.
But this this gentleman, UH, Steven l. Zowatowski with the
A s p c A UH talks about the history
of of these spit dogs and says that they were
so low on the social order that nobody took account
(17:23):
of them. Um, which kind of leaves the history a
little bit open ended. And then UM, there actually is,
if I'm not mistaken, a taxidermy turnspit dog on display
at the Abergaveney Museum in Wales. UH. The dog's name
is Whiskey, by the way, And this animal is described
(17:45):
by Stanley Corene, who wrote a book called Paw Prince
on History UM as having a very similar body shaped
to a Bassett hound with the head of a pit bull.
So we're we're sort of using our imaginations here and
thinking about what these dogs might have looked like. I
think we're from the same page and picturing a docs
in type situation. A Bassett hound is also similarly kind
of longer with with little stumpy legs, but it does
(18:08):
seem to be a breed that we wouldn't really see
these days. And you know, it's it's interesting how breeds
kind of fall in and out of favor, and if
you don't keep breeding them, then they're gonna eventually, like,
you know, get die out. Uh. And obviously there are
hundreds and hundreds of breeds of dogs throughout the world,
often bred for very specific reasons and uh, like, here's
(18:29):
a few examples from this cool medium article that we read,
turnspit dogs the original rotisserie machines UM. For example, jack
Russell terriers were bred to hunt rats, and border Collies
were bred for hurting sheep, and greyhounds were sleek and
quick so they could hunt hairs. Uh. And then Alsatians
were guard dogs, so they were all these very specifically
(18:52):
bred characteristics. UM. Turnspit dogs really really did have a
rough life. I mean, they were denied some of the
just most basic necessities that you think of in terms
of like a dog. Dogs overheat really quickly. They need
a lot of water to stay hydrated and to be healthy.
And apparently these spit turn dogs would work in teams
(19:16):
where they would there be like, you know, one working
and running its little hard out on the wheel, and
then when that one overheated, essentially it would it would
be replaced by another dog, and they would trade every
couple of hours. And even though they did try to
locate the wheel a little farther away from the spit
than it would have been with the early examples with
(19:36):
the kids turning it so close to the actual spit
because it was just a chain that was directly on it, um,
it still was very very hot and a lot of
this dry heat would hit the dogs um and they
weren't getting water, so they would really kind of they
were almost being tortured, you know, right, And it went
even further than that. You see, some of the more
(19:59):
villainous books involved in this situation might actually put hot
coals on the wheel if they thought the dog was
moving lazily, so they would threaten it with burns. You know,
I've been silent for a second here, and it's not
because I don't want to talk about this story just
(20:20):
to peep behind the pandemic curtain. Uh. We usually try
to avoid recording on Mondays because that's when my friendly
neighborhood leafblower uh does his uh does his weekly concert
outside of this window. I think he's using arc and
uh audible evil as a way to work through his
(20:41):
own issues. Uh. So, so we've had to stop and
start there's a couple of times, but I'm gonna give
it a go. If you hear anything in the background,
just just know it's a terrible person. Definitely is super
villain in the making. But what are you gonna do?
It's yeah, it's power through it. I'm kidding you know. Uh,
maybe we'll see if we can get them on the
(21:02):
show one day. That's a great idea, and he can
explain the terrible things that let him down this dark road,
why he is the way he is. Yeah. Right, So
the torture I am enduring is nothing compared to what
these poor pooches went through. Like you said, no, they
(21:24):
were not provided water on a regular basis and if
they were laboring under heat exhaustion. Some villainous cooks who
would be like leafblower operators today, would just say, you know,
these dogs are lazy, and they would put hot coals
in the wheel where the dog was running. And so
(21:44):
now the dog is doubling its efforts because it is
running in fear from being burned. This is a level
of abuse that, uh, like you said, was quite common
before the rise of animal rights. M there's a fascinating story,
(22:06):
and I don't know, it almost seems a little bit
uh fictionalized or overblown, but who knows. Uh. In the
Annals of bath Um historical account of of the time, UM,
there was a story about on the Sundays that the
dogs are off, they would often be taken to church
with the kitchen staff. Um. And apparently on one Sunday service,
(22:28):
the preacher was telling the story of Ezekiel and the
Wheel in the sky, and according to this account, the
third mention of the word wheel, all of the dogs
in the in the sanctuary bolted for the door. UM.
So yeah, now you take that one with the grain
of salt, but it definitely speaks to the levels of
abuse that these dogs were experiencing if it's true. Yeah,
(22:52):
and you can see other authors writing about this. In
the Illustrated Natural His Street from eighteen fifty three, John
George would note that the dogs were very aware of
their shift for lack of a better word, if they
(23:12):
weren't relieved at the proper hour, their innate sense of
timing would kick in and they would jump out of
the wheel without any orders, and then they would force
their companion, their fill in, to take their place. And uh.
There was another author named John Cordy Jefferson who wrote,
in a book about the table, I think a fanciful
(23:33):
story about the relationships that turnspit dogs had with their
canine co workers. Yeah, it goes like this. This is
a little bit long, but I think it's worth worth
kind of taking you there and setting the scene. Abused
by men of all degrees, and scorned by every other
dog of the house, a pair of turnspit dogs were
continually snarling at and fighting each other, each accused the
(23:57):
other of shirking his fair share of the or common
work and devouring more than his fair share of their
common ration, and in their mutual rage, they would sometimes
fight to the death. Bouffon tells the story of a
turnspit dog that, on escaping from the wheel in the
Duke de leon Force kitchen in Paris, ran in upon
(24:17):
his fellow turnspit and killed him because the latter had,
by sulking, compelled him to perform an additional spell of work.
A similar incident occurred at the Jesuits College of La Flesh,
where a turnspit dog, infuriated by being compelled to work
in the wheel when it was his turn to be resting,
had no sooner escaped from the cage of torture than
(24:40):
he hunted out his dishonest comrade, and after a brief
conflict with him, took his life. Wow, these were violent
little fellows, weren't they. I guess you know that's essentially
the kind of attitude you're gonna breed when when you
when you're living this life of constant servitude and sir
vival that, yeah, you not wouldn't make the most friendly animals.
(25:04):
I want I wonder if they were infamous for, like,
you know, attacking other household dogs. We talked about how
they were like on the lowest possible wrong of the
social strata in dog terms. In these households Um, I
bet they would be punished very severely if they were
caught nipping at the treasured, actual lapdog of the family. Yeah,
(25:25):
it's a good question. And again the history is spotty
because these dogs were not considered especially important, right they were.
It's like, why would you write history of a specific
kitchen gadget, which, by the way, or the exact kind
of books I love reading, Give me five pages on
(25:48):
the rise of the blender or the the sport, the fippoon. Uh,
what's another good one? Like the zeudler seen as zeudler.
What's a zudler? It makes noodles out of like vegetables,
zucchini and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Um. Also, you know,
(26:10):
the most dangerous kitchen appliance or gadget is that that
I own at least is a mandolin. You know, it's
made for like julianning things, and it's very easy when
you're scraping things on this plane with these crazy sharp
blades to accidentally slice your entire hand across that thing.
I've done it more than a couple of times, and
it's like getting clawed by a vicious cat with like
(26:31):
metal talents. What sacrifices will we not make in the
pursuit of great cuisine, which is really messed up way
to look at turnspit dogs. But also we're not heaping
approbrium on just the British. It's very easy to do
so because that's where most of the reports come from.
But less you look down on our cousins across the pod. Uh.
(26:55):
Please remember that there's evidence of turnspit dogs beat you
used in the early United States. Pennsylvania's founder did it,
that's right. And in the Pennsylvania Gazette, which was Ben
Franklin's publication, UM, you could pretty regularly see ads being
run for both the turnspit dogs themselves and the wheel
apparatus that we're talking about. UM. Pretty interesting. Uh. And
(27:20):
there's an account of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania,
and his wife Hannah UM through through some letters that
were found UM, asking uh friends in England to ship
them over a new wheel for their personal turnspit dog. Yeah.
This makes me so sad when we think about this, UH,
(27:40):
And I'm glad that the practice is no longer common.
It was very widespread. Like we said earlier, in seventeen fifty,
you could find turnspits anywhere in Great Britain, they were ubiquitous.
By eighteen fifty they were becoming scarce, and by nineteen
hundred they were functionally gone, which was a very good thing. Uh.
(28:01):
These new spit turning machines called clock jacks were replacing
turnspit dogs left and right, and according to Jan Bonson,
who wrote Amazing Dogs, a Cabinet of Canine Curiosity, it
ultimately became a sign of poverty to have a turnspit
dog instead of a steam operated clock jack. And the
(28:26):
author here says that these turnspit dogs were quote ugly
little dogs with a quite morose disposition, so nobody wanted
to keep them as pets. This just breaks my heart.
I I feel like every dog is great, it's just
a reflection of its owner. So I think these dogs
could have really blossomed with a little bit of TLC
(28:47):
if they weren't forced to run on a hamster wheel
for hours while someone was throwing coals at them. Yeah.
I mean, at least the hamster gets to just do
it for fun and a little exercise. I mean, can't
you imagine, Like, I mean, it's very definition of like
interminable to be forced to run on a wheel Uh, forever.
You know. It's yeah, it's it's really is the tortures
(29:10):
of the damned, my friend, the tortures of the damned.
No pup deserves that life. And it was these types
of abuses. We we mentioned this in the form of
a quote early on, but that led to organizations forming
with the novel goal of protecting animals from this type
(29:30):
of abuse. Um. It was, uh the turn of the
twentieth century which saw animal rights activist groups being being
created for for just that reason. Um, because of all
of the absurd, you know, abominable abuses that that had
been you know, heaped on animals throughout throughout the history.
(29:52):
So you've got this guy named William Boy's Weaver who's
a food historian, talking about the treatment of turnspit dogs
in an teen fifties Manhattan hotel. Uh, and it apparently
angered his friend Henry Berg so much that it actually
inspired Burg to found the a s p c A
(30:12):
in the eighteen fifties. So the s p c A
literally was founded because of the abuses that turnspit dogs
are going through. And since the institution's inception back in
eighteen sixty six, it has helped reduce the suffering of
hundreds of thousands, probably millions of animals across the country.
(30:34):
So something good did come out of the the tortures
of the now extinct turnspit dog. And if you want
to if you want to look at one, like you said, no,
the best example is going to be Whiskey, who has taxidermy.
But if you want to watch the closest thing to
a living one, a lot of people recommend you check
(30:57):
out the quirky, which is like the fancy version the
turnspit dog as the peasant version of the court love
a corky. And you know nowadays those dogs are more
bred for just cuteness. Maximum cuteness is what you get
with the corky. Um. And and there's another silver lining here,
and I think this is a great way to wrap
up the episode. Um. Some folks were a little kinder
(31:18):
and gentler to these turnspit dogs. Queen Victoria, for example,
kept three of them as house pets instead of kitchen tools. Um.
As as the Alice Obscure article that we've been referencing,
UM points out, and there is a poem from a
book called the Book of Days which describes the life
of a turnspit dog named Fuddle and uh and and
(31:41):
here here's how this one goes. Um. The whole the
backstory is that Fuddle is so angry at his uh
fellow turnspit dogs. As we pointed out in a previous account,
that there was often rivalry and and sometimes fighting to
the death between these um but there was also in
this story an evil look and uh. The two dogs
(32:03):
were fighting over like a pile of bones. Um, and
this is how the poem goes. He licked his lips
and wagged his tail. Was overjoyed he should prevail such
favor to obtain among the rest. He went to play,
was put into the wheel. Next day he turned and
ate as well as they and never speeched again. So
(32:26):
last thing, Ivan and say, I think I speak for
a lot of a lot of our fellow listeners when
I say ten ten, I want to see the turnspit
Dog movie. I want Pixar to do it. I wanted
to be about a plucky uh group of turnspit dogs
and maybe like a lovable scamp human kid in the kitchen,
(32:46):
a spit jack, and I want them to bust out,
and I want them to go on an adventure and
I want them ultimately to do like a I don't know,
some kind of like homeward bound thing mixed with a
little bit of uh find a Nemo and uh. I
want the one of the dogs to be played by
(33:07):
Steve Bushe love it and with the Steve Bushey eyes too.
I could totally picture that. Uh, you know, I gotta
add Ben. I think it'd be fun if this turnspit
dog it was dreaming of a life as a greyhound racer,
like because he's you know, like he he wants to
break out because he's he's the best turnspit dog is.
He runs the fastest and the steady is. But he
(33:28):
really is secretly dreaming of racing alongside those sleek uh greyhounds. Um,
which was the thing. I think greyhound racing it was
even a thing in medieval days where because they were
again bred to to hunt rabbits. So uh, that would
be cool. I love like that kind of fish out
of water story. And then you got and then all
the greyhounds are like, no, you you can't. You're not
(33:48):
in our league. A little short stubby legs he can't,
you know. And then and then and then he shows
that he's got moxie with sheer will and and and
and pluckiness. The Turnspit Dog does come pete and and prevails.
Well he's got you know. Eventually they meet, uh, they
meet royalty at the end of it, who are amazed. Right,
(34:09):
And the kitchen scamp, who plays a much bigger part
in this story, is you know, like the number one
human representative, kind of doing a Rata two e thing
and uh, he gets adopted or she gets adopted and
they live happily ever after. But the dog always does
(34:29):
still have Steve bushim his voice, and I think I
want him to turn out to be the narrator. Will
play with time a little bit, but we will play
with this time because this is the story of the
Turnspit Dog, and luckily it does have a somewhat positive ending. Yeah,
I agreed. Um, really enjoyed these two episodes that we
did this week. Um, sorry, Casey, didn't didn't mean to
(34:53):
trigger you with all the all the British stuff. I
know that you're staunchly in the you're on team France.
Did you send this leaflower, Casey? Is this your retaliation?
You know? Um? Wow, there's a lot of stuff you
can get on five where I'm just saying he's son
of the fish, okay, and then he's diabolical, absolutely diabolical.
But we love him all the same as do we
(35:14):
love Alex Williams Dearly who composed our theme. Christopher Hasciots
here in spirit as always, um Gay Bluzier, our research
associate extraordinaire Yes, and Jonathan Strickland a k. The Quister h.
If he had a Facebook relationship status with ridiculous history,
it would simply say it's complicated. Thanks thanks also uh
(35:38):
to dogs in general. Man, I just love dogs, like
oh it's send me pictures of your dogs. You can
find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter as a as a
show we love recommending ridiculous historians, but you can also
find us as individuals. Yes, I am exclusively on Instagram
at how Now Noel Brown and you can find me
(35:59):
on Twitter or Appen Bullying hs W, or you can
find me on Instagram at ben Bowling uh b O
w l I N. So there you have it. Who
let the dogs out? It was the uh the Age
of Machines. Who was the spc A mainly I think
it was, but there was also the steam operation aspect.
(36:20):
You know, there was this certain spit dogs had a
John Henry moment. We'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so
much for tuning in. I Uh, I gotta say, I
just love the cartoonish nature of this one. I'm Ben,
get that out of the way. And I love cartoons, Ben,
I love cartoons too, And I also love the word cartoonish.
And I really learned it from you, and I think
a lot of listeners have. They'll drop that word like
(00:50):
it's a nod to Ben Bolan. That's Ben Boland speak.
I love it you basically, Like it's not like you
own the word, but it's certainly you've got the Ben
Bowling trademark of cartoonish downpat for sure. Ben. You know
what I love delicious roasted meats, you know, especially on
a hand turned spit over an open flame, like like, yeah,
(01:14):
you ever see that massive cone of meat at the
euro Place, you know, or they shave it off the side.
It really isn't the same unless it's it's it's got
to be in motion, dude, That meat's gotta move, my friend.
That's where the flavor comes from. Everybody knows that, right, Yeah. Yeah,
It's just like at the Brazilian steakhouses. You remember those,
I am no, yeah, like Fogo to chow. What do
(01:35):
they call them gauchos or they like you have the
little car that you flip over when you meat, and
they bring you the meat and it's on a giant
skewer that they literally take off of these racks that
are like over these open flames and they're just glistening
with deliciousness and juices. Sorry if we're triggering any vegetarians
out there right now, but sorry, this is an episode
(01:56):
about rotating meat, uh, and hedonism and a weird ways
throughout history that that meat has been allowed to move.
That's true, that's true. This is one of those episodes
that's gonna leave the three of us null, myself and
our super producer, Casey Pegrum, incredibly hungry, ravenous famished afterwards. Uh,
(02:19):
you're right. The it has been scientifically proven by us,
with zero studies or experiments or oversight of any kind
or oversight of any kind, that the motion of meat
is what provides the succulents, the flavor, all all the
all the juicy goodness. It's there's a great uh, there's
(02:41):
great article and the vintage news That gets us into
this story where they talk about how in the Cartoon
and the Flintstones, one of the running gags was to
have animals taking the place of a of a machine, right,
household appliance of some kind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like you know,
the dishwasher was an octopus or there was I keep
(03:06):
remembering there was a bird right who would do something
and then there would be a weird you know, sound
cue and the bird would be like, that's it was
it like the faucet or something. There's definitely like a
pig as the garbage disposal. I definitely remember that and
it and it just lives under the sink, and I
guess the beauty there is like you're feeding the pig
(03:27):
with your garbage, so you don't really But then wouldn't
it just like poop everywhere? Though it seems like it
would be way more mess creating than it would be eliminating.
What do you think, Casey? I think you just you
take that and you do composting and then it's all
very sustainable exactly basically on the case. But it turns
out that wasn't so far fetched, Uh, the operative word
(03:50):
here being fetched. I like that that was good. It
turns out that once upon a time, once upon a
medieval time, there we go p well, did use animals
to do some of the same things that machines do today.
In the sixteenth century, there was a breed of dog
(04:11):
whose entire existence was to assist humans in cooking meat,
and it was known by the phrase the turnspit dog. Off. Mike,
I was talking with you guys about this over the weekend,
and when I first saw the phrase turnspit dog for
(04:32):
diving into the research, I thought they were dogs made
to be eaten, and I felt terrible, and I was
wondering whether we should skip this episode. But luckily it's not.
Had a different job no, uh, And I sort of
jumped the shark a little bit when I said, once
upon a medieval time, so we'll backchrack ever so slightly too.
Before these dogs were employed, uh, back in the medieval times. Um,
(04:56):
you know, in in Britain, they would essentially just scoff
at the notion of roasting meat in an oven. There's
a book called Amazing Dogs, A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities
by Jan Bondison, and it talks about the evolution of
this uh kind of dogg e tech that led to
uh the spit dog um. Initially, though in the fifteenth century,
(05:18):
it was it was it was hard work to rotate
this spit by hand. So if you were a chef
or you you know, you got a lot of other
things on your plate literally, uh and figuratively, and so
you're running around doing stuff. You don't have time to
turn the spit with a crank by hand. So you know,
in these royal households um and you know, moneyed kind
(05:38):
of gentry situations, Uh, you absolutely had to have your
roasted spit meat. And in order to do that, you
had to actually have someone whose entire job it was
to rotate the meat. If you didn't have it rotating
at a steady pace, you know, you would run the
(06:00):
risk of it not being cooked evenly, or being overcooked
or or undercooked or whatever. So you had to have
somebody that was like rotating it by hand. And initially, uh,
it was children that did it. And and this is
kind of disturbing, actually apparently oftentimes it was such hot, sweaty,
backbreaking work that the children would do this job in
(06:24):
the nude, Yeah, because oftentimes if they were wearing their
clothes they would get so hot that they could faint.
And we can't have these these spit children fainting because
what what will happen to our meats? They will stop
rotating and that's not gonna fly. So, you know, off
with the clothes, young spit child. This is disturbing stuff.
(06:45):
Apparently they weren't even allowed to take breaks and there
are reports of them having to urinate in the fireplaces.
Uh in Henry, the eighth home of Hampton Court. Um,
it's it's pretty dark. They were called spit jack's and
they were they would maybe get a wet bail of hay.
That was about what they had in terms of workers rights.
(07:07):
And this could be seen as you know, like a
funny site gag in a comedy film. But this was
a very real and very torturous existence. And this was
also a luxury. It wasn't like if you were in
the average family in England at the time. It's not
(07:30):
like your parents would make you and your siblings draw
straws to see who has to turn the meat all night. Uh.
This is something that you would see more like taverns
or the homes of aristocracy. But by the fifteen hundreds
there was something that was kind of like a the
medieval version of outsourcing. Because these kids, they weren't just
(07:56):
living a rough life, they were also frankly often fainting
just from heat exhaustion, and they get these horrific blisters
on their hands, which means even when they weren't fainting,
it was very difficult for them to work. So picture
King Henry the eighth, like a person in an infomercial,
(08:18):
just dropping glasses and stuff, and he's going, there's got
to be a better way. Yeah, this filthy nude street urchins,
open sores are getting all over my meat. That's a
disgusting image. And I apologize, folks, but it's true. I mean,
this was really untenable. And I imagine they had to
have them kind of like off camera, you know what
I mean, like somehow like pay no attention to the
(08:41):
the the young lad behind the curtain, turning the meat
spit um. So yeah, there there did have to be
another way. Uh. And and it turns out that other
way was what we uh know now um as a
turnspit dog um, which in the sixteenth century really became
the way. Uh. And to to get this done and
(09:04):
to to get the kids you know, let's let let's
give them some of the let's you know, let's put
them back in the stables, you know, give them some
other kind of dehumanizing and dangerous work. Um. But you
know we're gonna we're gonna relegate spit turning to these
dogs a particular breed of dog in fact, right, that's right.
You can see a depiction of this in some old drawings. Uh,
(09:25):
we found one that was I think through amusing planet.
But let me just describe this too. So there's there's
a bench and it's clearly a tavern kind of restaurant
to people are sitting there, families having food and drinks.
And there's someone who works at the tavern watching the
(09:45):
fire where a leg of what appears to be you know,
lamb or beef is slowly turning on the spit and
it's attached through this uh system of pulleys to a
hamster wheel kind of hanging a wooden wheel hanging from
a roof beam. And there's a tiny dog just forrest
(10:06):
gump level, running his heart out in the wheel to
turn the meat. Uh. There is also a cat who
is on the you can see at the bottom who's
just sort of staring in idle curiosity at the dog.
I was thinking maybe the cat was there to like,
you know, like as like a stick and carrot kind
of approach. You know, like the cat is what the
(10:28):
dog is constantly running after in place, you know, on
this little hamster wheel. Because I do, I do wonder
like I mean, that requires some training, you know, I
would think a dog eventually would get bored of just
running around on a wheel. Uh. They would probably be
some abusive tactics that would go into making sure these
dogs never stopped right, Yeah, Or maybe they're just very
(10:49):
energetic naturally. The way they're described reminds me a little
bit of doctions of wiener dogs because they've got short
legs that got a long body drooping ears. Uh. The
zoologist Carl Linnaeus called the Canus revertigious dizzy dog dizzy
(11:09):
doug because they were always running around in circles. So
let's talk a little bit about this apparatus. Uh, that
had to be like custom design like for this purpose,
you know, because the kids were essentially turning a chain
or like pulling a lever kind of situation. Obviously, dogs
(11:29):
don't have hands, um, so they had to kind of
manufacture something that would allow the dog to use its
like locomotion to constantly turn this spit. Uh. So basically
it was a hollow wheel just like a hamster wheel
UM with an axle connected to it, and that would
turn the chain or strings that was attached to the
(11:50):
spit and keep it rotating um at a steady pace. UM.
As the dog would run just like a hamster wheel,
the spit would turn and they were able to um
locate the device away from the actual spit to keep
the dogs from from getting too hot, which you gotta
wonder why they didn't figure that out for the kids.
(12:12):
Maybe that would have kept them from, you know, passing
out constantly. It seems like they gave the dogs a
lot more attention and care than they did these children. Yeah. Yeah,
and maybe if being optimistic, I could say that it's
a lesson learned from their first time out the gate
with this abusive practice. But maybe, like many people, they
(12:35):
just liked dogs more than they liked humans, sort of
like the Nazis and horses, right right, Like the Nazis
and horses, the dogs had a number of uses, but
they also had almost like workers rights. I'm not sure
how to say it. They had Sundays off and and
they also you know, when they were done with kitchen duty, Uh,
(12:59):
they were given another job. They were trained to sit
on their owner's feet to keep them warm in manner
houses and in castles which are famously drafty. I'm sorry,
I'm not trying to harp on this too much, but
it's crazy. They gave the dogs sundays off and the
children worked around the clock year round. I mean, I
(13:21):
aid only assume it wasn't something that we came across
of like what days did the kids get off? It
didn't seem like they did. Uh. Really bizarre and interesting. Um,
so let's talk a little bit more about the actual breed.
We talked about a name that was given to what
has it been canus vertigious dizzy dogous dog? Yeah exactly. Uh.
(13:44):
This was you know, much like docs sins with their
short legs and and long kind of slender bodies. I
believe we're bred for a particular type of hunting. Initially
in Germany, that's true. The British dog breeders were looking
for specific qualifications. Had to be dogs was small enough
(14:04):
to fit in a wheel. Irish wolfhound wouldn't fit the bill,
you know. Uh, they had to be super strong, they
had to be energetic, and they couldn't be dummies because
you had to be able to train them to do
some specific things. And they definitely didn't want them to
talk back like those pesky animal appliances in the flint stumps,
or have hands like those pesky children. So according to
(14:27):
the Kennel Club in London, Uh, the first mention of
them occurs in fifteen seventy six in the first book
on dogs ever written. This is the book English Dogs
by John Kiss. He said that they so diligently looked
to their business that no drudge nor Scullion can do
the feat more cunningly, Drudge and Scullion being names for
(14:51):
kitchen staff at the time. Uh. And did we say
it's other Latin name yet? Oh? You the vernapeture cur?
What's that mean? Uh? It's just essentially like kitchen dog
or cooking dog, if I'm not mistaken. I love the
idea of a cur that's sort of a term of abuse,
an old timey one like you cur, you villainous cur,
(15:12):
which I guess is a dog. I didn't really realize
that until looking into the research for this episode. Um,
but yeah, I mean it is a good example. Like
I was talking about Dockson's being bred specifically for hunting.
It was for hunting specific types of small game like badgers,
which I thought would uh would do it for you ben,
and and other types of rodents and smaller things. They
(15:32):
wanted to be lowered to the ground so they could,
like wheat, wiggle into some of the smaller spaces that
those creatures would go. Um, and it's the spit dog,
according to this book of the English Dogs by John Caius,
was a really good example of breeding an animal for
a specific purpose. And to be honest, they have a
(15:55):
little bit of a spotty history. We've been being very
nice to the kitchen staff. Uh. These dogs were well
known in contemporary society. Uh, people wrote about them. Shakespeare
has a dog mentioned in the Comedy of Errors. And
the hard truth of it is that these dogs did
(16:17):
not have a good life, right Like, yes, they didn't
work on Sundays, but the kitchen staff usually got Sundays off. Yes,
they got to hang out with their owner and keep
their feet warm. And that's you know, it gives gives
us all the all the cute fuzzy feels. But we
have to remember that these were not ornamental pets. These
(16:37):
were dogs with a function and they were treated pretty roughly. Yeah.
And it wasn't until um, you know, animal cruelty groups
like the A s p c A or the American
Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals UH started kind
of taking notice of of, you know, animal rights. The
(17:00):
idea of animal rights was not a thing like it
was really like animals were here for us and we
would do with them as as we as we pleased. Um.
But this this gentleman, UH, Steven l. Zowatowski with the
A s p c A UH talks about the history
of of these spit dogs and says that they were
so low on the social order that nobody took account
(17:23):
of them. Um, which kind of leaves the history a
little bit open ended. And then UM, there actually is,
if I'm not mistaken, a taxidermy turnspit dog on display
at the Abergaveney Museum in Wales. UH. The dog's name
is Whiskey, by the way, And this animal is described
(17:45):
by Stanley Corene, who wrote a book called Paw Prince
on History UM as having a very similar body shaped
to a Bassett hound with the head of a pit bull.
So we're we're sort of using our imaginations here and
thinking about what these dogs might have looked like. I
think we're from the same page and picturing a docs
in type situation. A Bassett hound is also similarly kind
of longer with with little stumpy legs, but it does
(18:08):
seem to be a breed that we wouldn't really see
these days. And you know, it's it's interesting how breeds
kind of fall in and out of favor, and if
you don't keep breeding them, then they're gonna eventually, like,
you know, get die out. Uh. And obviously there are
hundreds and hundreds of breeds of dogs throughout the world,
often bred for very specific reasons and uh, like, here's
(18:29):
a few examples from this cool medium article that we read,
turnspit dogs the original rotisserie machines UM. For example, jack
Russell terriers were bred to hunt rats, and border Collies
were bred for hurting sheep, and greyhounds were sleek and
quick so they could hunt hairs. Uh. And then Alsatians
were guard dogs, so they were all these very specifically
(18:52):
bred characteristics. UM. Turnspit dogs really really did have a
rough life. I mean, they were denied some of the
just most basic necessities that you think of in terms
of like a dog. Dogs overheat really quickly. They need
a lot of water to stay hydrated and to be healthy.
And apparently these spit turn dogs would work in teams
(19:16):
where they would there be like, you know, one working
and running its little hard out on the wheel, and
then when that one overheated, essentially it would it would
be replaced by another dog, and they would trade every
couple of hours. And even though they did try to
locate the wheel a little farther away from the spit
than it would have been with the early examples with
(19:36):
the kids turning it so close to the actual spit
because it was just a chain that was directly on it, um,
it still was very very hot and a lot of
this dry heat would hit the dogs um and they
weren't getting water, so they would really kind of they
were almost being tortured, you know, right, And it went
even further than that. You see, some of the more
(19:59):
villainous books involved in this situation might actually put hot
coals on the wheel if they thought the dog was
moving lazily, so they would threaten it with burns. You know,
I've been silent for a second here, and it's not
because I don't want to talk about this story just
(20:20):
to peep behind the pandemic curtain. Uh. We usually try
to avoid recording on Mondays because that's when my friendly
neighborhood leafblower uh does his uh does his weekly concert
outside of this window. I think he's using arc and
uh audible evil as a way to work through his
(20:41):
own issues. Uh. So, so we've had to stop and
start there's a couple of times, but I'm gonna give
it a go. If you hear anything in the background,
just just know it's a terrible person. Definitely is super
villain in the making. But what are you gonna do?
It's yeah, it's power through it. I'm kidding you know. Uh,
maybe we'll see if we can get them on the
(21:02):
show one day. That's a great idea, and he can
explain the terrible things that let him down this dark road,
why he is the way he is. Yeah. Right, So
the torture I am enduring is nothing compared to what
these poor pooches went through. Like you said, no, they
(21:24):
were not provided water on a regular basis and if
they were laboring under heat exhaustion. Some villainous cooks who
would be like leafblower operators today, would just say, you know,
these dogs are lazy, and they would put hot coals
in the wheel where the dog was running. And so
(21:44):
now the dog is doubling its efforts because it is
running in fear from being burned. This is a level
of abuse that, uh, like you said, was quite common
before the rise of animal rights. M there's a fascinating story,
(22:06):
and I don't know, it almost seems a little bit
uh fictionalized or overblown, but who knows. Uh. In the
Annals of bath Um historical account of of the time, UM,
there was a story about on the Sundays that the
dogs are off, they would often be taken to church
with the kitchen staff. Um. And apparently on one Sunday service,
(22:28):
the preacher was telling the story of Ezekiel and the
Wheel in the sky, and according to this account, the
third mention of the word wheel, all of the dogs
in the in the sanctuary bolted for the door. UM.
So yeah, now you take that one with the grain
of salt, but it definitely speaks to the levels of
abuse that these dogs were experiencing if it's true. Yeah,
(22:52):
and you can see other authors writing about this. In
the Illustrated Natural His Street from eighteen fifty three, John
George would note that the dogs were very aware of
their shift for lack of a better word, if they
(23:12):
weren't relieved at the proper hour, their innate sense of
timing would kick in and they would jump out of
the wheel without any orders, and then they would force
their companion, their fill in, to take their place. And uh.
There was another author named John Cordy Jefferson who wrote,
in a book about the table, I think a fanciful
(23:33):
story about the relationships that turnspit dogs had with their
canine co workers. Yeah, it goes like this. This is
a little bit long, but I think it's worth worth
kind of taking you there and setting the scene. Abused
by men of all degrees, and scorned by every other
dog of the house, a pair of turnspit dogs were
continually snarling at and fighting each other, each accused the
(23:57):
other of shirking his fair share of the or common
work and devouring more than his fair share of their
common ration, and in their mutual rage, they would sometimes
fight to the death. Bouffon tells the story of a
turnspit dog that, on escaping from the wheel in the
Duke de leon Force kitchen in Paris, ran in upon
(24:17):
his fellow turnspit and killed him because the latter had,
by sulking, compelled him to perform an additional spell of work.
A similar incident occurred at the Jesuits College of La Flesh,
where a turnspit dog, infuriated by being compelled to work
in the wheel when it was his turn to be resting,
had no sooner escaped from the cage of torture than
(24:40):
he hunted out his dishonest comrade, and after a brief
conflict with him, took his life. Wow, these were violent
little fellows, weren't they. I guess you know that's essentially
the kind of attitude you're gonna breed when when you
when you're living this life of constant servitude and sir
vival that, yeah, you not wouldn't make the most friendly animals.
(25:04):
I want I wonder if they were infamous for, like,
you know, attacking other household dogs. We talked about how
they were like on the lowest possible wrong of the
social strata in dog terms. In these households Um, I
bet they would be punished very severely if they were
caught nipping at the treasured, actual lapdog of the family. Yeah,
(25:25):
it's a good question. And again the history is spotty
because these dogs were not considered especially important, right they were.
It's like, why would you write history of a specific
kitchen gadget, which, by the way, or the exact kind
of books I love reading, Give me five pages on
(25:48):
the rise of the blender or the the sport, the fippoon. Uh,
what's another good one? Like the zeudler seen as zeudler.
What's a zudler? It makes noodles out of like vegetables,
zucchini and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Um. Also, you know,
(26:10):
the most dangerous kitchen appliance or gadget is that that
I own at least is a mandolin. You know, it's
made for like julianning things, and it's very easy when
you're scraping things on this plane with these crazy sharp
blades to accidentally slice your entire hand across that thing.
I've done it more than a couple of times, and
it's like getting clawed by a vicious cat with like
(26:31):
metal talents. What sacrifices will we not make in the
pursuit of great cuisine, which is really messed up way
to look at turnspit dogs. But also we're not heaping
approbrium on just the British. It's very easy to do
so because that's where most of the reports come from.
But less you look down on our cousins across the pod. Uh.
(26:55):
Please remember that there's evidence of turnspit dogs beat you
used in the early United States. Pennsylvania's founder did it,
that's right. And in the Pennsylvania Gazette, which was Ben
Franklin's publication, UM, you could pretty regularly see ads being
run for both the turnspit dogs themselves and the wheel
apparatus that we're talking about. UM. Pretty interesting. Uh. And
(27:20):
there's an account of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania,
and his wife Hannah UM through through some letters that
were found UM, asking uh friends in England to ship
them over a new wheel for their personal turnspit dog. Yeah.
This makes me so sad when we think about this, UH,
(27:40):
And I'm glad that the practice is no longer common.
It was very widespread. Like we said earlier, in seventeen fifty,
you could find turnspits anywhere in Great Britain, they were ubiquitous.
By eighteen fifty they were becoming scarce, and by nineteen
hundred they were functionally gone, which was a very good thing. Uh.
(28:01):
These new spit turning machines called clock jacks were replacing
turnspit dogs left and right, and according to Jan Bonson,
who wrote Amazing Dogs, a Cabinet of Canine Curiosity, it
ultimately became a sign of poverty to have a turnspit
dog instead of a steam operated clock jack. And the
(28:26):
author here says that these turnspit dogs were quote ugly
little dogs with a quite morose disposition, so nobody wanted
to keep them as pets. This just breaks my heart.
I I feel like every dog is great, it's just
a reflection of its owner. So I think these dogs
could have really blossomed with a little bit of TLC
(28:47):
if they weren't forced to run on a hamster wheel
for hours while someone was throwing coals at them. Yeah.
I mean, at least the hamster gets to just do
it for fun and a little exercise. I mean, can't
you imagine, Like, I mean, it's very definition of like
interminable to be forced to run on a wheel Uh, forever.
You know. It's yeah, it's it's really is the tortures
(29:10):
of the damned, my friend, the tortures of the damned.
No pup deserves that life. And it was these types
of abuses. We we mentioned this in the form of
a quote early on, but that led to organizations forming
with the novel goal of protecting animals from this type
(29:30):
of abuse. Um. It was, uh the turn of the
twentieth century which saw animal rights activist groups being being
created for for just that reason. Um, because of all
of the absurd, you know, abominable abuses that that had
been you know, heaped on animals throughout throughout the history.
(29:52):
So you've got this guy named William Boy's Weaver who's
a food historian, talking about the treatment of turnspit dogs
in an teen fifties Manhattan hotel. Uh, and it apparently
angered his friend Henry Berg so much that it actually
inspired Burg to found the a s p c A
(30:12):
in the eighteen fifties. So the s p c A
literally was founded because of the abuses that turnspit dogs
are going through. And since the institution's inception back in
eighteen sixty six, it has helped reduce the suffering of
hundreds of thousands, probably millions of animals across the country.
(30:34):
So something good did come out of the the tortures
of the now extinct turnspit dog. And if you want
to if you want to look at one, like you said, no,
the best example is going to be Whiskey, who has taxidermy.
But if you want to watch the closest thing to
a living one, a lot of people recommend you check
(30:57):
out the quirky, which is like the fancy version the
turnspit dog as the peasant version of the court love
a corky. And you know nowadays those dogs are more
bred for just cuteness. Maximum cuteness is what you get
with the corky. Um. And and there's another silver lining here,
and I think this is a great way to wrap
up the episode. Um. Some folks were a little kinder
(31:18):
and gentler to these turnspit dogs. Queen Victoria, for example,
kept three of them as house pets instead of kitchen tools. Um.
As as the Alice Obscure article that we've been referencing,
UM points out, and there is a poem from a
book called the Book of Days which describes the life
of a turnspit dog named Fuddle and uh and and
(31:41):
here here's how this one goes. Um. The whole the
backstory is that Fuddle is so angry at his uh
fellow turnspit dogs. As we pointed out in a previous account,
that there was often rivalry and and sometimes fighting to
the death between these um but there was also in
this story an evil look and uh. The two dogs
(32:03):
were fighting over like a pile of bones. Um, and
this is how the poem goes. He licked his lips
and wagged his tail. Was overjoyed he should prevail such
favor to obtain among the rest. He went to play,
was put into the wheel. Next day he turned and
ate as well as they and never speeched again. So
(32:26):
last thing, Ivan and say, I think I speak for
a lot of a lot of our fellow listeners when
I say ten ten, I want to see the turnspit
Dog movie. I want Pixar to do it. I wanted
to be about a plucky uh group of turnspit dogs
and maybe like a lovable scamp human kid in the kitchen,
(32:46):
a spit jack, and I want them to bust out,
and I want them to go on an adventure and
I want them ultimately to do like a I don't know,
some kind of like homeward bound thing mixed with a
little bit of uh find a Nemo and uh. I
want the one of the dogs to be played by
(33:07):
Steve Bushe love it and with the Steve Bushey eyes too.
I could totally picture that. Uh, you know, I gotta
add Ben. I think it'd be fun if this turnspit
dog it was dreaming of a life as a greyhound racer,
like because he's you know, like he he wants to
break out because he's he's the best turnspit dog is.
He runs the fastest and the steady is. But he
(33:28):
really is secretly dreaming of racing alongside those sleek uh greyhounds. Um,
which was the thing. I think greyhound racing it was
even a thing in medieval days where because they were
again bred to to hunt rabbits. So uh, that would
be cool. I love like that kind of fish out
of water story. And then you got and then all
the greyhounds are like, no, you you can't. You're not
(33:48):
in our league. A little short stubby legs he can't,
you know. And then and then and then he shows
that he's got moxie with sheer will and and and
and pluckiness. The Turnspit Dog does come pete and and prevails.
Well he's got you know. Eventually they meet, uh, they
meet royalty at the end of it, who are amazed. Right,
(34:09):
And the kitchen scamp, who plays a much bigger part
in this story, is you know, like the number one
human representative, kind of doing a Rata two e thing
and uh, he gets adopted or she gets adopted and
they live happily ever after. But the dog always does
(34:29):
still have Steve bushim his voice, and I think I
want him to turn out to be the narrator. Will
play with time a little bit, but we will play
with this time because this is the story of the
Turnspit Dog, and luckily it does have a somewhat positive ending. Yeah,
I agreed. Um, really enjoyed these two episodes that we
did this week. Um, sorry, Casey, didn't didn't mean to
(34:53):
trigger you with all the all the British stuff. I
know that you're staunchly in the you're on team France.
Did you send this leaflower, Casey? Is this your retaliation?
You know? Um? Wow, there's a lot of stuff you
can get on five where I'm just saying he's son
of the fish, okay, and then he's diabolical, absolutely diabolical.
But we love him all the same as do we
(35:14):
love Alex Williams Dearly who composed our theme. Christopher Hasciots
here in spirit as always, um Gay Bluzier, our research
associate extraordinaire Yes, and Jonathan Strickland a k. The Quister h.
If he had a Facebook relationship status with ridiculous history,
it would simply say it's complicated. Thanks thanks also uh
(35:38):
to dogs in general. Man, I just love dogs, like
oh it's send me pictures of your dogs. You can
find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter as a as a
show we love recommending ridiculous historians, but you can also
find us as individuals. Yes, I am exclusively on Instagram
at how Now Noel Brown and you can find me
(35:59):
on Twitter or Appen Bullying hs W, or you can
find me on Instagram at ben Bowling uh b O
w l I N. So there you have it. Who
let the dogs out? It was the uh the Age
of Machines. Who was the spc A mainly I think
it was, but there was also the steam operation aspect.
(36:20):
You know, there was this certain spit dogs had a
John Henry moment. We'll see you next time, folks. For
more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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Noel Brown
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